Love is a suicide
by Tara1189
Summary: I am your fear's nourishment, love, the blood that you feast upon. Klaus/Katherine


**Summary:** _I am your_ _fear's nourishment, love, the blood that you feast upon_. Klaus/Katherine

Don't ask me where this came from. Apparently the wait for Season 5 is clearly getting to me, and I'm also on something of a Klaus binge at the moment. Normally Elijah/Katherine is more my crack, but this is a guilty secret ship of mine (honestly, it's harder to find a pairing on this show I _don't_ ship, due to the fact that Nina Dobrev has chemistry with literally everything) and a pairing that is seriously underexplored in canon. Also, it was more fun than it should have been writing a more villainous Klaus.

Title and lyrics credit of Natalia Kills.

* * *

**Love is a suicide**

_Am I the epitome  
Of everything you hate  
And you desire  
You love me like an enemy_

.

.

"_Zdravei_, Katerina."

Lord Niklaus – _Klaus _– stands upon polite ceremony, even though she is only a mere peasant girl in this swathe of murmuring nobility, alone, adrift _(disgraced), _a stranger in a strange land_._

Klaus takes her in with a single, slow glance. Lifts a hand to his lips. Holding her gaze, smiling and smiling like a hungry wolf. Even then, she had thought there was something dangerous about him _(devouring)._

And, for the first time in her life (but not the last, certainly not the last) Katerina Petrova feels like prey.

Only she's too young, too foolish, too _naïve _to run.

.

.

By day, Elijah goes on long walks with her and reads poetry aloud and smiles like the sensation is something new and unfamiliar to him. By night, Klaus breathes hot profanities on her skin, slants a grin as she rakes his back with her nails _(you can't come _close _to hurting me, love), _tells her to _scream _– and when she refuses, berry-stained lips (not blood-stained, not yet) pressed tightly together and stubbornly looking away through a fringe of dark lashes, he only laughs, running a hand down the slope of her neck in something like a caress, but not _quite_ –

_Oh well. Time enough for that later._

.

.

"My brother, it seems, is rather taken with you."

Katerina stills, her heart beating strangely. It's an unfamiliar situation – caught between two brothers rivalling for her heart – she's not sure she likes it. She struggles to find words (that Elijah's grave sincerity touches something deep inside her, fills her with hope, while Klaus's wild unpredictability – treacherous and dangerous, charming and fascinating – blurs him out like the sun eclipsing the moon).

Turbulent blue-green eyes burn into her, pupils dilating, dark enough to drown out the world.

"What do you think of him, love?"

The words rise to her lips, unbidden. "He's an honourable man."

"Yes. That always was his undoing."

Klaus smoothes a hand over her mass of dark hair, fingers curling slightly around the back of her neck, digging into the skin and unfurling bruises like ink (that later she won't remember him making).

"But not this time."

.

.

Run, run, _run – _

Heart banging against her ribs, breaths coming short and sharp, pain lancing through her side, _stupid _and _weak_ and mortal and _alive –_

She's going to die.

_Klaus will find you, wherever you are._

It was all a lie. She was fooled, duped, taken in –

She understands it all now; the sadness in Elijah's deep eyes, the desperation on Trevor's face. For all their declarations of _love, _they had known all along she was a sacrifice, a burnt offering to be lit at the altar of Klaus's insanity.

_Never, _she thinks between gasping breaths, grass blades and thorns scratching her face, _never again. _Klaus's face leers at her in every shadow. The gleam of mockery in his eyes, the flash of teeth in his blood-lipped smile. Every compliment _(every searing touch) _so artfully planned, priming her for the slaughter.

So she runs, fear and anger and betrayal keeping the life burning bright and fierce in her lungs, her heart beating at an ever accelerated rate. Runs because it's all she can do.

But she knows it's not enough.

.

.

She's huddled in the dusty shadows of the hut, tangled hair and torn skirts, knees drawn up to her chin.

_He won't have me, _she silently vows with bloodless lips, dark eyes burning in her white face_. He'll never have me alive._

With shaking hands, Katerina pulls the rope towards herself.

Half a minute later, she's dead.

.

.

Three hundred and ninety two years pass.

She lives on the run – if it can be called living – always a hairsbreadth _(a whisper, a scream) _away from pursuit. Keeping one step ahead, knowing in the midst of all her lies and schemes and games games _games, _there is only rule. Win or die.

So she lives every day like it's her last, drinking deep and snapping necks and drowning herself in any man fool enough to offer her his heart –

It's not enough to drown _him_ out, though.

Klaus is the taunting voice behind every kill, the biting pain in every blistering kiss. When she closes her eyes she sees bare skin glowing gold in the fire, the raw hunger in his expression, hands grazing her hips as he whispers with satisfied indulgence, _run away… I _dare _you – _

And she does. His voice at her shoulder the moment she dares to _think _she might slow down. _I am your_ _fear's nourishment, love, the blood that you feast upon_.

The lash of his anger burns hot and bright. Always, in her mind's eye, his face twisted in passion, twisted in rage. An embodiment of vengeance and murder and desire thwarted. Determined to follow her to the ends of the earth.

_Niklaus shows no pity, no mercy to those who defy him – _

Someone has to pay. It shouldn't be her, but it always is. Haunted by that cursed word, _doppelganger. _He had only wanted her because she wore the face of the girl he had once loved (back when Klaus _could _love), a girl long dead –

Sometimes, when she stops for breath, Katherine wonders if that's why he hates her so much.

.

.

Damon is easy prey, but Stefan's an old soul with an earnest nobility that resurrects memories of Elijah and second chances. He sees something pure in her, a fragment maybe, a glimmer of the girl that Klaus killed. But there's something else that draws her to him as well, the promise of something ruthless and unleashed beneath the surface. She knows that she will turn him.

But Klaus can't be forgotten so easily, and she's been too careless. His influence overpowers her life like a shadow, bleeding into everything and poisoning her chance of finding even a moment's peace. The deadly edge of his anger is still sharp, and like a far-flung dagger, he always finds her eventually. He tears up the roots she's laid down in this rustic little town and she has no choice but to die again.

Katerina of the wind-blown hair and laughing eyes would have mourned the loss of friends, her self-made family, the Salvatores who would _(and will) _die for her. But Katherine with lips dark as wine and heavy-lashed glances that kill feels no remorse.

She has to survive. Nothing else matters.

_Nothing._

.

.

She follows Stefan to Chicago.

It's foolish, risky, and completely goes against the cunning that's kept her alive these last few centuries.

_Katherine _is made for the spotlight, but she's forced to watch from the shadows, knowing deep down what she's really hiding from. Yet she still comes back night after night. Something about the speakeasy appeals to her, the atmosphere dark and secret and smoky. A taste of something forbidden.

She follows Stefan, so of course it's Klaus she finds. Her heart stops when she sees him, smooth and elegant in a tuxedo, blood and liquor staining his mouth. Not so much has changed. He dominates the bar, dominates the _world, _like it was made for him _(to bow down to his whim). _The lazy ease, glittering eyes and cuff-turned hands work their dangerous charm and she's inarticulate with hatred (unnerved by the stirring of illicit desire). She knows that she can't fight him and rages that he's the one person in all of existence that can make her feel like this – _powerless_.

Two nights later, she's smiling a curving crimson bow of triumph when the bar is raided. Heels clicking, pearls trailing idly from her fingers as she makes a leisurely exit.

He's running from someone.

.

.

She knows it's all over when the doorway throws up an invisible barrier, and suddenly he's in front of her, strange but unnervingly familiar. She's half-blind with terror, caught, like an animal in a snare _(Katerina again)_. Her face trapped between his hands, her fearful gaze locked on his.

He _looks _like Alaric, ashen and rumpled, smelling of bourbon and old regrets, but the _eyes_… in the eyes she can see right through to Klaus, that ingenious, diabolical mind like the intricate workings of the inside of a clock, a steady ticking down to her destruction. _Tick tock tick tock – _

He smiles, running his knuckles slowly along her cheek.

"I have _missed_ you."

A slow exhalation on her skin.

Katherine closes her eyes, and her eyelashes brush death.

.

.

Inch by excruciating inch, she pulls herself upright, pain screaming along every line and nerve of her body. Klaus is leaning casually against Alaric's kitchen counter, returned to his own body again and regarding her with _insane _detachment.

"You were going to kill me," she rasps through the taste of metal in her mouth, "You can't blame me for running."

"Perhaps not," agrees Klaus. "But I can punish you for it."

His hand curves around back of her neck. Katherine tenses, expecting him to snap her spine, wrench it from her body and hold it over her, a dripping trophy –

Terror is beating hard in her throat when, instead, Klaus jerks her hard against him, his mouth beginning the trail of a slow and burning path across her humming skin.

"What are you doing?" she manages, throwing all the loathing she can muster into her voice. Inside, she's strung up, _wanting, _that animal craving on the verge of breaking out. And she knows he can sense it, _taste _it. Just like he can pull every wicked little thought out of her head.

Klaus smirks. Cruel and perverse and utterly _merciless. _"Oh, I may want you dead, sweetheart. But that doesn't mean I can't have some fun first."

.

.

Katherine doesn't even _try _to fight him.

.

.

Klaus is a gentleman, renowned for showing every courtesy.

Careful never to let the pleasure eclipse the pain as his hand slides along the dips and curves of skin, fingers pressing sharp into her thighs, drawing blood and pausing to admire the effect _(pure artistry, my dear, one as lovely as you should understand)_.

Katherine wants to claw his eyes out so she doesn't have to see the knowing in them, the blue gleam of exultation as she arches up into his hot-blooded kiss. Tasting salt and copper and everything bitter. _Hating _herself for every gasp of longing he brutally drags from her, knowing that she'll never give him anything willingly –

_(I didn't want to do this the hard way, love) _

When he bites into the slick curve of her shoulder, she feels herself tighten around him and he smiles feral against her neck. Pushes in deeper. She cries out, but he presses a hand over her mouth. She licks his palm, pants against his burning fingers. In return, Klaus leaves marks, branding scars both inside and out. Marking her as his, body and soul.

(But not in her heart, never her heart).

.

.

He thinks she's Elena.

His face sharp and ruthless, illuminated by the strobe lights, the background music fading to a distant hum. He doesn't know – _how can he not know?_ – and so remains pleasant and polite. Even has the audacity to offer her a drink.

"You seem nervous."

"I'm not nervous, I just don't like you." Katherine's eyes flash defiance in a way that quivering, doe-eyed Elena's _never _could.

They circle each other warily, fire poised to fight fire. Desire simmers in the air, heady and potent, the thirst to _kill._ And more. Sweet, bitter and dangerous all the time. The scent of danger and death.

"Give it your _best _shot." He taunts her. Provoking.

She licks her suddenly dry lips. Stares at him, the creature that killed her family, the monster who will never stop hunting her. Hatred burns in her blood, and for a moment – just a moment – his fate rests in her hands. A heady, intoxicating rush, the power to strike him down. She thinks of intricately-laid plans, Mikael and Damon and Stefan, Stefan, _Stefan – _

Then it all blows away like ashes in the wind. Klaus walks away, king and lord and master of her existence, holding all the cards like he always has done (always will).

She has the chance to kill him, and doesn't.

.

.

"Are you certain this is what you want, Katerina?"

Her hand rests on his, burgundy-tipped nails tightening involuntarily around his fingers. The cure sits between them. He gazes at her in that very _Elijah _way, uncompromising and world-weary, the grim edges of his mouth easing slightly. It almost makes her heart soften. In those solemn dark eyes is the promise of something _more _than the blood and rage she's been surviving on for centuries.

But even as she draws breath, commits herself, Katherine reflects that she's still choosing the route that keeps Klaus alive _(never stops to think why that is)_.

"Please, Elijah," she says (and she really thinks she means it), "I just want to stop running."

.

.

_It's been a fun five centuries, Klaus, but I've worn down too many good heels running from you._

_Love — and hate — Katerina_

She crosses her long legs sinuously, laying down the pen. Drains the glass of whiskey (sharp, bitter, and so very _Katherine_) with a practised flick of the wrist. Prepares herself to play the waiting game.

The next move must be his.

_._

_._

The dim bulb flickers intermittently in the cheap motel room. The dust on the ceiling, crack-filled plaster walls and the smell of stale liquor fills her with disgust, but she daren't go anywhere more conspicuous. She can't draw attention to herself.

She's seated at the mirror, carefully lining her eyes with dark kohl pencil (still acting the part of the _femme fatale_ even though her claws have been removed). Her fingers shake slightly as she fans out her long curls _(clumsy, weak, but she'll never show that she's scared) – _

A floorboard creaks.

Katherine looks up, and –

He's pinned her against the wall, a hand around her throat. Pressed bodily against her, a slant of heat and raw _hunger – _

"So, love," he breathes, soft and sweet against her neck. "You're human again."

He's too strong and her bones break too easily in this pathetic human _shell _of a body. But she struggles for form's sake, hisses a curse as Klaus wrenches her head back, breathing in the scent of her fear.

"You've led me a merry dance, haven't you?"

"It was worth it," she grounds out through clenched teeth. Her eyes still have the power to cut daggers and her smouldering gaze rakes him _apart_.

Klaus laughs, amused and deranged. So _very_ single-minded. "Not nearly as worth it as _this _will be."

The breath is flung from her body as he slams her to the floor. Kneeling over her with elaborate precision, an administering angel with a devil's face. Katherine breathes in, raw and bloody and sharp. Throws a longing glance at the door.

Only this time she's too old, too wise, too _cynical _to run.

.

.

_You can run, you can hide  
But sooner or later, it's gonna cut like a knife_


End file.
